China judgment paper website continues to rack up record numbers of hits

The world’s largest judgment paper website, China Judgements Online (CJO), had been viewed 12.5 billion times last year up until Tuesday, according to the Supreme People’s Court, which is a strong backer of social governance.

CJO has so far published more than 41.3 million judgment papers, including 11,100 papers in minority languages. The website receives an average of 15.1 million visitors each day, with the record being 50 million hits in one day, according to the SPC.

The website was launched on July 1, 2013 as part of an effort by the Supreme People’s Court to promote China’s judicial system reforms.

The website, which gives details of judicial cases to the public, has been beneficial to courts, judges, lawyers across China in the past four years.

Zhou Wei, co-founder of the Zhengyuan credit service, said that the published database has not only provided lots of reliable sources for law firms in dealing with lawsuits, but has also helped to boost the legal industry.

Among the 12.5 billion visits, 1.8 billion are from foreign visitors, mostly from South Korea, India, the Philippines, Australia and Japan.

Tian He, a researcher at the Institute of Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the number of clicks from other countries show that China’s judicial reform has grabbed global attention. The databases on the website also include historical features showing how China’s judicial judgment has evolved and offer solid support for social governance, he said.